Seldom do I let generic phrases inspire my monthly editorials. Corny and often overused lines such as “If these walls could talk” is something I have yet to say to anybody in my entire life. It’s a common adage that’s been around for ages, mostly spouted off by ghost hunters, prison inmates, and men who think their wives are having an affair.

Luckily, I’m none of those. However, I have from time to time wondered what it would be like if inanimate objects could speak their mind; Does a door like being slammed? Does a paycheck know that it’s only good until it’s stamped and filed into a drawer at the bank? Or more importantly, what would the mental capacity of a mobile phone be after you’ve dropped it on the floor several hundred times? If my now 2-year old Droid is of any evidence, I’d have to guess somewhere between Corky from Life Goes On and Forrest Gump.

What if cars could talk? I’m not going to count those limited-vocabulary, one-liner offerings that automakers built during the mid-‘80s, which only stated the obvious, telling you that your door was “ajar” or that you were almost out of fuel. The only reason this “feature” ever came to fruition to begin with was in large part due to the engineering teams having been inspired by the massive popularity of a particular talking Trans Am from a TV show.

Now, just imagine for a moment if your Chevelle could directly tell you it preferred Pennzoil over Mobil 1, that BF Goodrich tires were more comfortable than Goodyear’s, or that BP fuel taste like crap, at least compared to Shell or Sunoco.

How well would it respond to modifications? Usually you could tell if your car is running to lean, too rich, or if the changes you’ve made were a mismatch to the rest of your setup. But how exactly would your car put it to you? “Hey Monkey Wrench, try again?” What about its duds?  Would changing the color scheme, its wheels, or putting that mega sound-system in the trunk make it smile or make it angry?

I’d like to think it would be seen as forcing someone to have plastic surgery simply because you don’t like the way they look. It sounds awful, but modeling agencies do it all of the time to people, so why should a car be any different if you think it needs a bit of nip and tuck?

Your car could also be used as someone, err, something to talk to on those long commutes to and from work, as opposed to talking to a friend on your mentally challenged cell phone, which is illegal, or talking to yourself, and from what psychologists say, qualifies you as a mental case. If you carpool, then you don’t really have that problem I suppose, unless you hate your coworker(s), and if that were the case then you most likely wouldn’t let them ride with you to begin with. But I digress.

What would really be beneficiary is if your car could tell you all about its previous owners, how well it was maintained, and where it has been. Was it really ever kept out of the snow? Was it ever really owned by a little old lady, or was that all BS the previous owner thought sounded good in the ad?

Think about the last time you had work performed on your car. I know, if you’re anything like me you do most of the work on your own car yourself, but bear with me for a moment.

Did the guy who painted your car actually spray it with two coats of HEMI Orange, or just one? Did Jiffy Lube use 5 quarts of full-synthetic oil or the same amount of the mineral variety when it charged you for the former?

How about that bird that crapped on your windshield, the miscreant that keyed your door or those strange dings that seemingly appeared out of nowhere on your trunk lid? Surely, I would have loved it if my Caddy could have told me who it was a victim of several months ago, along with a picture, name, and address displayed on my navigation screen. This information would have been great to have when I had to take time out of my day to go to the police station to fill out a report. Not to mention for my own piece of mind.

But maybe that’s why inanimate objects can’t speak. Could you imagine someone being on trial for murder because they’ve reacted to a situation based on what a wall, a doorknob, or what their car had told them? Picture in your mind for a moment somebody’s Lay-Z-Boy recliner being questioned by a prosecutor in front of a jury as a witness, and you’ll get the picture.

Then there’s the chance of your ’57 Chevy developing Alzheimer’s, a Mustang with Turrets, or a Monte Carlo with a really bad stutter. If it were possible for your car to talk, then there surely would be a good chance of it becoming an arrogant, pain in the ass that won’t shut up.  I’m assuming the only way to quell its ramblings would be to disconnect the battery, and then nobody would ever get to work and we would have a financial crisis on our hands… again.

We could rely on walking, riding a bicycle (which would be able to talk as well, obviously) or something worse –such as riding a horse to get where we needed to go. Society would be set back almost 120 years as a result, and in this day and age of personal computers the size of your palm, that’s just not going to fly.

Environmentalists would love this because of the huge reduction in pollution, obviously. Unfortunately, they would never get to their peace rally, brag about how efficient their idiotic Prius is, nor would they ever have anything to complain about. Hmm, that doesn’t sound so bad. But that’s a huge price to pay for the rest of us who are happy with our lives, and want to continue motoring in our fossil-fueled powered vehicles.

So while the sci-fi geeks fantasize about a future where everything is computerized and talks, I’ll be continuing my life in a world that isn’t…and doesn’t. There was a reason the talking car as an entity didn’t last, after all.